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Millions Displaced by Olympics: Study
Minorities, homeless especially at risk.
More than two million people have lost their homes or been forcibly displaced by the Olympic Games over the past 20 years according to a major new report on urban mega events released today by a European think tank.
The three year study, conducted by a research team at the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), studied seven Olympic cities: Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing and London.
“Our research shows that little has changed since 1988 when 720,000 were forcibly displaced in Seoul, Korea, in preparation for the Summer Olympic Games,” said the group’s Executive Director Jean Du Plessis in a release. “It is shocking and entirely unacceptable that 1.25 million people have already been displaced in Beijing, in preparation for the 2008 Games, in flagrant violation of their right to adequate housing.”
While the study found that the most serious violations were limited to Seoul and Beijing, they did record a number of adverse affects in all host cities including:
- Approximately 30,000 marginalized Atlanta residents lost their homes in the run up to the ’96 Games. Over 9,000 arrest citations were also issued to homeless people in the run up to the games in an attempt to ‘clean up’ the city;
- Olympic related real estate speculation saw drastic reductions in affordable housing in Sydney and Barcelona in years before they hosted. Signs of a similar escalation have already been noted in London.
- Roma in Athens and Barcelona were also disproportionately affected by the games. In Barcelona, between 90 and 100 percent of those living near the Olympic village were displaced.
According to their website, COHRE is a not for profit non-governmental agency focused on the right to housing and forced evictions. The group receives money from a number of UN agencies as well as the governments of Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands.
The study released Tuesday did not look at the upcoming B.C. games. However, in an accompanying fact sheet, the researchers noted that “despite impressive promises to promote affordable housing in the world’s first ‘socially sustainable games’, there are grave concerns about the eviction of low income tenants already taking place in Vancouver.”
The researchers were also critical of City Hall’s so-called ‘civil city’ initiatives, noting that that kind of legislation “has been used elsewhere, such as in Atlanta, to target the homeless.”
Organizers for the Vancouver games defended their social record on Monday when they issued the first in a series of ‘sustainability reports.’
At an event in Vancouver, Linda Coady, VANOC’s vice-president of sustainability, "reiterated a promise” made during the original bid process “that no 'person-at-risk' will be displaced or subjected to unreasonable rent increases because of the Winter Olympics,” according to the Globe and Mail’s Rod Mickleburgh.
Housing issues, however, are on a collision course with the Vancouver Games according to an investigation by The Tyee's Monte Paulsen.
In a major three-month study, Paulsen found that “unless Mayor Sullivan and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell radically reshape their response to North America’s fastest-growing homelessness crisis, the number of Greater Vancouver homeless will easily exceed the 5,000 athletes and officials expected to participate in the 2010.” ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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Working Memory
4 years ago
old news
This is old news.
Where were you three years ago when it mattered and you could actually do something about it?
Jim Van Rassel
4 years ago
The Olympics create homelessness
The Olympics create homelessness June/ 05/ 2007
As you can see from past Olympics and projections for the Olympics in the future, there is an extremely high social and moral cost with hosting the Olympics. If you were to tell everyone involved in getting the Olympics for Vancouver Whistler that there would be over 3000 + homeless directly or indirectly related to that decision, I wonder what their decision would have been then. It is obvious that Gordon Campbell and his liberals Vanoc and its directors had no regard for the social consequences then, now, and during the games. I have attached an article from the Vancouver Province which helps illustrate my point further.
Jim Van Rassel
Coquitlam
604-328-5398
Olympics boot 1.25 million out
Reuters
Published: Tuesday, June 05, 2007
GENEVA -- At least 1.25 million people have been forced from their homes in Beijing to make way for the 2008 Olympic Games and the number could top 1.5 million by later this year, a housing rights group said yesterday.
The Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions said the final figure was going to be some four times the 400,000 it had reported in 2005.
In London, where the Games will be held in 2012, housing for 1,000 people was already facing demolition five years before the event, it said.
In a study of the impact on housing of seven past and future Games, the group said that too often the most vulnerable and marginalized members of a community were the losers.
For the 1988 games in Seoul, 720,000 people were forced from their homes, while four years later in Barcelona property became so expensive as a result of the Games that low-income earners were forced to leave the city.
dorothy
4 years ago
half-and-half
"If you were to tell everyone involved in getting the Olympics for Vancouver Whistler that there would be over 3000 + homeless directly or indirectly related to that decision, I wonder what their decision would have been then."
So have there been no polls since? It would be tremendously interesting to see what they would show!
Menawhile, we have to assume that the just-under 50% who voted against the Olympics were in fact able to see all this for themselves, and so we must say the message to the marginal people, who have little to bolster themselves against the greed, fears, idiosyncrasies and just palin caprice of others: Be happy your fate is in the hands of half-and-half; at least you win some of the time!
Budd Campbell
4 years ago
How Does a One-Month Spectacle Affect Property Prices?
Thy Olympic and Paralympic Games last about a month or so. Surely no rational investor is going to build additional units of permanent housing solely to meet a one month to six week peak demand.
And no rational buyer of residential real estate is going to offer to pay more for a given property on the grounds that they might be able to rent it out for a month or so.
The idea that the Olympic Games have contributed to Vancouver's general housing shortage is frankly absurd. What has contributed to the high price of housing here are long-standing local and provincial policies, consciously chosen for their ability to raise prices, but cleverly advertised as meeting some other, more benign objective than simply jacking up the non-taxable capital gains of the generations that managed to buy in prior to the most recent upsurge.
Chief among these are restrictive zoning and floor space ratios in Vancouver and Burnaby, and the opposition to freeways and heavy rail, and a truly perverse insistence on spending billions on dysfunctional LRT systems over long haul routes. These policies are intended to restrict supply (zoning and FSRs) and to raise demand for convenient locations (no freeways or fast trains), both of which act to raise prices. That is, in fact, the only real reason these policies are in place, and are constantly renewed and reinforced. The various ecological BS stories that are used to promote them are really just smokescreens to hide the avaricious greed of an incredible bunch of rippers.
ov
4 years ago
Spin Master
Some commenters are so slick that they truly earn any money they get paid by VANOC et al whatever. If they aren't getting paid then I think they are trolling for a job.
JIm
4 years ago
Budd, You made one huge
Budd,
You made one huge mistake in your post. You used the word rational. No debate around the Olympics is rational. No topic spurs more irrational posts than the Olympics. According to some posters the Olympics are the cause for every ill in society around the world for the last 40 years.
Working Memory
4 years ago
Budd
Budd, like many people in Olympic regions you are unfortunately, misinformed, but it is to be expected because Olympic organizations are masters at managing their affairs.
What you see occurring in Vancouver/Whistler occurs in all Olympic regions.
Olympic frenzy does in fact artificially inflate property values, and in almost every single Olympic region where it happens as obscenely as it did here, it crashes too, although in some cases the crash is more like a slow death spiral.
You asked how a one-month spectacle affects house prices in your post. Well, if you're really interested to learn how it happens read my book, LeverageOlympicMomentum.com.
I explain at all in detail.
Maurice Cardinal
Budd Campbell
4 years ago
... it crashes too, ...
... it crashes too, although in some cases the crash is more like a slow death spiral.
Good. I can't wait.
JIm
4 years ago
I wish working memory would
I wish working memory would stop trying to sell their damn book on here.
OneWomanArmy
4 years ago
I'm more worried about Community Courts
The Community Courts are supposed to be up and running in September.
THIS is the Mayors solution to the 'relocation of many poor people.' If you hang around the alleys or you're a Sex Trade Worker or you're homeless or you just don't look right or act 'right' is going to land you in this little court, which is then going to determine one of two things:
Go to Riverview (which the Mayor said in a story by the Courier that Riverview is cooperating with him)
OR
Go to Jail
This is the provinces solution. Throw them all in a mental institution or jail.
If you've read the sit down report with Hugh Stansfield, Chief Judge entitled 'Criminal Justice and the Community' you can clearly see the direction these courts are going to take.
There's even a flow chart diagram listed on the CAST website showing how the people will be 'removed.'
It can be found here:
http://www.castvancouver.org/proposal.html
And as I live and work in the DTES at an NGO, I can tell you right now we are going to be FLOODED with issues surrounding this strategy, and I'm talking about human rights violations.